GMail for Ruby

A Rubyesque interface to Google's GMail, with all the tools you'll need. Search, read and send multipart emails, archive, mark as read/unread, delete emails, and manage labels.

Installation

You can install it easy using rubygems:

sudo gem install gmail

Or install it manually:

git clone the repository
cd gmail
rake install

To install gmail gem you have to met following requirements (with rubygems all will be installed automatically):

• mail
• mime
• smpt_tls (Ruby < 1.8.7)

Features

• Search emails
• Read emails (handles attachments)
• Emails: label, archive, delete, mark as read/unread/spam, star
• Manage labels
• Create and send multipart email messages in plaintext and/or html, with inline images and attachments
• Utilizes Gmail's IMAP & SMTP, MIME-type detection and parses and generates MIME properly.

Basic usage

First of all require the gmail library.

require 'gmail'

Authenticating gmail sessions

This will you automatically log in to your account.

gmail = Gmail.connect(username, password)
# play with your gmail...
gmail.logout

If you pass a block, the session will be passed into the block, and the session will be logged out after the block is executed.

Gmail.connect(username, password) do |gmail|
  # play with your gmail...
end

Examples above are "quiet", it means that it will not raise any errors when session couldn't be started (eg. because of connection error or invalid authorization data). You can use connection which handles errors raising:

Gmail.connect!(username, password)
Gmail.connect!(username, password) {|gmail| ... play with gmail ... }

You can also check if you are logged in at any time:

Gmail.connect(username, password) do |gmail|
  gmail.logged_in?
end

XOAuth authentication

From v0.4.0 it's possible to authenticate with your Gmail account using XOAuth method. It's very simple:

gmail = Gmail.connect(:xoauth, "email@domain.com", 
  :token           => 'TOKEN',
  :secret          => 'TOKEN_SECRET',
  :consumer_key    => 'CONSUMER_KEY',
  :consumer_secret => 'CONSUMER_SECRET'
)

For more information check out the gmail_xoauth gem from Nicolas Fouché.

Counting and gathering emails

Get counts for messages in the inbox:

gmail.inbox.count
gmail.inbox.count(:unread)
gmail.inbox.count(:read)

Count with some criteria:

gmail.inbox.count(:after => Date.parse("2010-02-20"), :before => Date.parse("2010-03-20"))
gmail.inbox.count(:on => Date.parse("2010-04-15"))
gmail.inbox.count(:from => "myfriend@gmail.com")
gmail.inbox.count(:to => "directlytome@gmail.com")

Combine flags and options:

gmail.inbox.count(:unread, :from => "myboss@gmail.com")

Browsing labeled emails is similar to work with inbox.

gmail.mailbox('Urgent').count

Getting messages works the same way as counting: Remember that every message in a conversation/thread will come as a separate message.

gmail.inbox.emails(:unread, :before => Date.parse("2010-04-20"), :from => "myboss@gmail.com")

You can use also one of aliases:

gmail.inbox.find(...)
gmail.inbox.search(...)
gmail.inbox.mails(...)    

Also you can manipulate each message using block style:

gmail.inbox.find(:unread).each do |email|
  email.read!
end

Working with emails!

Any news older than 4-20, mark as read and archive it:

gmail.inbox.find(:before => Date.parse("2010-04-20"), :from => "news@nbcnews.com").each do |email|
  email.read! # can also unread!, spam! or star!
  email.archive!
end

Delete emails from X:

gmail.inbox.find(:from => "x-fiance@gmail.com").each do |email|
  email.delete!
end

Save all attachments in the "Faxes" label to a local folder:

folder = "/where/ever"
gmail.mailbox("Faxes").emails.each do |email|
  if !email.message.attachments.empty?
    email.message.save_attachments_to(folder)
  end
end

You can use also #label method instead of #mailbox:

gmail.label("Faxes").emails {|email| ... }

Save just the first attachment from the newest unread email (assuming pdf):

email = gmail.inbox.find(:unread).first
email.attachments[0].save_to_file("/path/to/location")

Add a label to a message:

email.label("Faxes")

Example above will raise error when you don't have the Faxes label. You can avoid this using:

email.label!("Faxes") # The `Faxes` label will be automatically created now

You can also move message to a label/mailbox:

email.move_to("Faxes")
email.move_to!("NewLabel")

There is also few shortcuts to mark messages quickly:

email.read!
email.unread!
email.spam!
email.star!
email.unstar!

Managing labels

With Gmail gem you can also manage your labels. You can get list of defined labels:

gmail.labels.all

Create new label:

gmail.labels.new("Urgent")
gmail.labels.add("AnotherOne")

Remove labels:

gmail.labels.delete("Urgent")

Or check if given label exists:

gmail.labels.exists?("Urgent") # => false
gmail.labels.exists?("AnotherOne") # => true

Composing and sending emails

Creating emails now uses the amazing Mail rubygem. See its documentation here. The Ruby Gmail will automatically configure your Mail emails to be sent via your Gmail account's SMTP, so they will be in your Gmail's "Sent" folder. Also, no need to specify the "From" email either, because ruby-gmail will set it for you.

gmail.deliver do
  to "email@example.com"
  subject "Having fun in Puerto Rico!"
  text_part do
    body "Text of plaintext message."
  end
  html_part do
    content_type 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
    body "<p>Text of <em>html</em> message.</p>"
  end
  add_file "/path/to/some_image.jpg"
end

Or, compose the message first and send it later

email = gmail.compose do
  to "email@example.com"
  subject "Having fun in Puerto Rico!"
  body "Spent the day on the road..."
end
email.deliver! # or: gmail.deliver(email)